


Despite the Weight of Recollection

by flagvalley



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Theatre, F/M, lore gags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:08:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27775093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flagvalley/pseuds/flagvalley
Summary: Lavellan has a story to tell. Some listen more than most.
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas
Kudos: 4





	Despite the Weight of Recollection

**Author's Note:**

> A thespian AU that simply needed to get out. Title from the poem Myself and Thou from Theatres of the Night by Herbert Morris.

If the backlights do not come on right this second, Lavellan may just have to murder the entire audience in their seats.

Three years of work, and it all comes down to this moment. Three years of rewrites, rejections, and rehearsals, and it all comes down to a few dozen heads filling up Skyhold Theater’s smallest stage waiting in dimmed darkness for _anything_ to happen. She does not want to guess how many minutes have passed. She only wants to kick in the door to the tech booth and shake Cassandra to ask what in the Void is preventing the cursed sound cue from playing.

Lavellan presses her eyes shut, unwilling to bear the temptation to scan the small sea of silhouettes for any sign of a yawn, an eyeroll, any indication that this entire endeavor had been a pitiable mistake from the beginning. In this erroneous silence, her heartbeat is loud enough for the entire room to hear. She is just about ready to get up and command the house lights to be turned back on, when —

It is a simple melody, recorded on strings that almost seem to belong to a human lyre, but not quite – more the tools of a hahren’s story-weaving, eyes widening by firelight, a Keeper’s lullaby.

At last, the blue backlights come on, and the contours of her forest are revealed. Among them, the paper cut-out shape of a wolf fades into view.

\--

_“You think you are free to hunt for these children I call my own, on these grounds that I have claimed, under our native skies? You think we are so blind as to not notice such trespass?”_

_“My dear goddess, as is plain to see, I am not free at all.”_

_\--_

“Total crap, if you ask me.”

“Couldn’t follow a thing.”

“Tokenistic. All this Dalish mumbo-jumbo – only got squeezed into the season to fulfil some quota, I’m sure.”

Lavellan snakes around the comments in the crowd, a glass of a rather satisfactory Rivaini vintage in hand, and lets them bounce off her as easily as they try to jump under her skin. Nothing she had not expected, and nothing she had not already heard trying to pitch her script to playhouses all across the city and beyond for the past three years. These humans are fools to think that this was made for them.

The reception hall is absolutely packed. Far more people sipping overpriced wine and canapés than could have fit into her theater, even if it had been a full house. She knows they are here for the house’s new writing festival, seen as a prime networking opportunity for any thespian hopeful, rather than her play. Still, it happened, and she is here, and she cannot help the grin spreading across her lips.

Cassandra finds her first, squaring her hands on Lavellan’s shoulder, pale as if she is to announce someone’s sudden demise.

“I am so sorry,” she says. “The computer froze, at the worst possible moment. I was firing up my back-up, and Blackwall was over manning the lights, but the audio file was…”

“It’s all good,” Lavellan says with a light-chested laugh. “The rest was flawless. You were flawless.”

“How do you feel?”

It is difficult to give even a cryptic smile at that. In truth, it feels like a beginning. Watching her words be spoken loud enough to reach into other people’s hearts for the first time, dressed in Cassandra’s lights, coming to truer life than even her mind’s most indulgent dreams could have envisioned — and then the applause, the audience rising from their seats, the flowers thrust upon her by her actors, the moment when she had looked out and seen all these faces looking to her, eyes that had seen this strange beast that had leapt from her own heart right onto the stage. If this had been possible, the rest of her life could hold anything in store.

Cassandra understands, as she always has, but then she is called away by some rogue wire or another, and leaves Lavellan for the strike. She has Cassandra to thank more than most, the stage manager who stood by her as arts foundation after arts foundation pulled back their grant offers, if they gave any responses at all. She makes a mental note to order Cassandra a whole new stack of all her favorite serials, with a note encouraging her to take a long and well-deserved holiday.

“Did we smash it or did we smash it! Oi! Inky!”

Next up was, inevitably, Sera. Bolting fresh out of her dressing room, barely out of costume, painted-on vallaslin still on her face (Lavellan’s more permanent ones had earned her the nickname), she throws an arm around Lavellan’s shoulder as soon as she catches her in the crowd.

Sera had not been with them long. No one had pinged her as suitable for the haughty Andruil. Rather infamous in the community for her lack of professionalism and inability to keep a rehearsal schedule, Sera was shunned by many companies. None of it seemed to get to her. Perhaps that was what had struck Lavellan as perfect for the part. Her hunting goddess was irreverent, feral, impossible to pin down for even a second. Besides, Sera had not let any of them get away with any stress-induced furrowed brows. Even if it took spiking any coffees left unguarded.

“You were brilliant,” Lavellan tells her.

“Now, now, if that’s where you start for her, I cannot wait to hear what adjectives you have in store for me,” Dorian’s voice says. He comes on up from behind them both, far more cleaned up, his post-show cocktail attire rather more glittering than his Anaris costume.

“Terrifying. Imposing. Formidable,” she offers, and Dorian’s hand makes little waves encouraging her to keep going. “A nuanced and layered performance subverting expectations for Tevinter representation that will be spoken of in drama studies seminars for years to come?”

“Now that’s you tooting your own horn more than mine,” Dorian says. “You can make it up to me by directing me to where I can pick up one of those wine glasses.”

“Two for that question,” Sera says, but she has already spotted the refreshment table before finishing her sentence. “Booze in sight! Catch you later, Inky!”

Lavellan laughs as Sera drags Dorian away, both turning heads as they go. Dorian accepts every passing compliment with a royal wave, while Sera barely acknowledges them.

She had quite meant what she had said. For Anaris, she had been forced to fill in so many blanks that her childhood stories had left between the scaremongering and hushed whispers. She had tried to make her Forgotten One a person rather than a bogeyman, but the pieces had never fallen into place before she had found Dorian for the role. Regal and poised to contrast against Andruil, but with a hint of gentleness, something in which to ground the bond between the darker god and the tale’s central trickster. She had been fully aware that casting an up-and-coming Tevinter actor in a role traditionally considered villainous risked playing into ugly stereotypes, and so she had checked every line and stage direction by Dorian himself. He had waved off every concern both with his sheer talent and his insistence that he was all too happy to star in a heathen Elvhen production, satisfied by imagining the veins popping on his father’s temple. There are no words for the respect she holds for the man, for all he has sacrificed to pursue his true calling. She cannot wait to work with him again.

She has only one more actor to congratulate, and so she wanders close to the wall (though not without being accosted by her publicity manager Josephine, who hugs her with glee and champagne) to approach the exit closest to the dressing room. She makes it just in time to see her Fen’Harel stretch out his shoulders and wander down the stairs, clean-faced and dressed in black leather, carrying a bouquet.

“Ah, my dear Lady Director,” he says to greet her, returning to his Antivan accent that he so flawlessly concealed in-character. “I trust you are enjoying your party?”

Zevran gestures to her wine glass with a wink.

“It is yours more than mine. Your adoring fans are waiting.”

“They are all the more prone to swooning if they have to wait for the pleasure. What is your people’s saying? Dread Wolf take you?”

“Not quite with that meaning, but yes. Seriously, though, you were perfect.”

“Naturally. Come on, I’m happy to share the limelight.”

Zevran takes her by the arm and leads her back into the crowd, complaining loudly of how long it had taken to get rid of all the straps of his complicated costume. She laughs, noting that Vivienne had never once in her life considered practicality in her career as costume designer.

Zevran was certainly her most unexpected casting choice, but after tonight’s performance, she has no regrets. The Dread Wolf was the heart of the entire play, and had needed an instant charisma to make any Dalish theatregoer forget about the curses and cautionary tales and convince any Chant-abiding audience member that her people’s mythology was worthy of attention. The story of Fen’Harel and the Tree was one that more conservative hahrens only begrudgingly told, unwilling to encourage any admiration of the Dread Wolf’s cunning among the young. She had only heard it straight from her Keeper, always followed by precautions — this was a deity who could fool any god into destroying themselves. What match were mere mortals?

Zevran, always one to keep his cool whatever rumors of his unsavory past floated about, seemed to understand this on a fundamental level. She would never pry past her welcome, but something in Zevran had brought out things that even she had not realized were there in her script. In his performance, there was something of a loneliness about him, hidden beneath the charm. Something like sorrow, always belonging to both sides and neither at the same time.

Indeed, his fans catch sight of him as soon as they re-enter the fray, and she happily leaves him to their cooing as she instead catches the eye of a few rare faces covered in vallaslin, with whom she shares knowing nods and smiles. One of them even raises their glass.

Her heart as warm and full as the foyer, Lavellan looks around the room to behold her creation. Dorian obviously flirting with a Qunari by the bar, Sera spraying a champagne bottle undoubtedly stolen from Josephine, Cassandra and her two stagehands struggling to carry boxes of equipment through the crowd to the van outside, Zevran hardly struggling at all to dance around autograph and selfie requests. Somehow, she has gathered all these people in the same room. Somehow, she has made this thing happen. She has told this story, exactly the way it deserves to be told.

Keeper, she whispers in her heart’s most hidden corners, how I wish you could have seen this.

Before she can continue this private prayer, a new voice behind her interrupts.

“Ah. I presume it is the script writer’s scent I have caught?”

\--

_“You have no claim to this wolf. He belongs to the Forgotten Ones, for his first crimes were against us.”_

_“You kid yourself if you think he belongs to anyone in the world. Bind him by force, or not at all.”_

\--

The elf is bare-faced, and bald, and dressed in a velvet blazer of modest quality, though its harvest gold shade does stand out to the eye.

“Um, yes?” she says, unsure if she is to brace for criticism or praise.

He stretches out a hand.

“Solas, from Skyhold Theater’s reader panel.”

Recognition clicks into place in Lavellan’s head. She has seen this face in black-and-white photos on the inside sleeve of books and Meet the Team website tabs. She has read this name followed by the letters PhD and a litany of honors and publications. She probably folded it into a reference footnote or two in her MFA days.

Most of all, she remembers it in the signature of the email that finally said yes to her script.

“Of course!” she says, shaking his hand an awkward second too late. “Sorry, I did not know you would come along to the premiere?”

“Of course,” he repeats. “Congratulations are in order. It was a triumph.”

“You liked it?” she has to ask, because his deadpan expression does not entirely convey sincerity in the compliment.

“Very much, in fact. It is always a pleasure to see a script one has advocated for come to full fruition. Beyond that, I am certainly not the only one who gave it a standing ovation.”

A tiny smile at that — for some reason, she cannot help but suspect it of mockery.

“I never got the chance to thank you for the acceptance in person. It was a long road before your panel finally gave your submission response.”

“Believe me, most of the panel was lobbying for another Tethras adaptation to headline the festival, but a few are still not quite so hard of hearing to be able to recognize a new voice that deserves amplifying.”

“So not a token Dalish shoe-in, I take it?”

Without meaning to, her eyes wander across his face, smooth enough to reveal that they have never been inscribed with blood-writing. His quite traditional Elvhen name on the acceptance letter had made her wonder for a moment if this had been the lucky result of having one of the People in the right seat at the right time — but his face scrunches up as if she has offended.

“I assure you it was nothing of the sort. I simply found it to be a script with considerable merit. If I may ask, however, is there anything that motivated the choice of subject matter?”

“I assume you are more than familiar with how much my people value our mythology, and how little the outside world pays it any mind.”

“This particular tale, I mean. Fen’Harel and the Tree is not one of the most commonly told stories.”

In a way, she should concede that he would know — but most of her pride buckles in resistance to the comment. For all his academic accomplishments, he has never sat around a campfire close to midnight, listening so as to carve every word into her memory despite sleep’s heavy weight on his eyelids, kept awake by the certainty that if you do not pass down these tales, no one will. He may have appreciated her script, but he has no idea what is at stake. How dare he pry these things from her heart?

And yet, he knows the story as she wanted to tell it, and cares enough to ask the question.

“It is not. When my Keeper told it, she meant it mostly as a warning, that the wolf may trick you no matter who you are. Or to not be so distracted by trivial squabbles as to lose sight of your true mission. Something like that. But when I came back to it later, I found… I thought it held up a kind of veil through which we could find more of what was lost. We know so little of the Forgotten Ones, but here is one named. We know so little of how the first of our people conceived of the power struggles of their gods, back when they did not feel so distant, but here they are wrestling like schoolchildren. And then Fen’Harel in the middle of it all, simply chewing his way out of a trap. It stuck with me, I suppose.”

“You gave a striking humanity to these deities in your version. If you pardon my phrasing.”

“Nothing good has ever come of treating the gods as infallible objects of worship, has it?”

Solas gives her a true chuckle at that. It is a sound that a glossy author headshot would never make.

“Quite so.”

“Anyway. Thank you for helping this make it to the stage.”

“The credit is all yours. I understand this project could not have been easy. No matter the regard we give to ancient tales and memories, the past tends to resist its recollection. To bring it plainly to the page, breathe life into its weary bones — that is more than worthy of high honors.”

As the playwright she is, there is something hidden to be wrung from his words, but she would reach for nouns like “sorrow” sooner than ridicule. It is a statement of some fact cowering between the lines, rather than flattery to fill up the small talk.

All at once, it feels like the conversation has turned more intense than it has any right to be.

“I hear there is champagne,” she says. “Care for a glass? It is your theater’s festival too after all.”

“Later, perhaps. And it is hardly my theater. Though…”

He fishes for a business card from his front pocket.

“… we do have a fellowship program that I hope you might consider. Send me a line later, and we can discuss further if it interests you.”

She takes the card, simply printed with his name and contact details, with no particular affiliation listed. He is simply his own, it seems.

“Oh, I certainly will,” she says, because of course she has ogled the website for months already.

“Till next time then,” he says with a nod, and brushes past her shoulder, and before she can turn around to see where he is heading, he is already gone, replaced by stranger faces.

Lavellan stares at the business card, faint music in her ears, still feeling like something is only beginning.

\--

_“Look at the both of us, bleeding out, and our enemy scuttles off into the night without a care in the world. Some gods we are!”_

_“Gods or fools, what difference!”_

\--

She is heading back to the bar to refill her glass, fully ready to get drunk in earnest with the people she has come to call some kind of home, when a breeze from an open window leading to the theater’s magnificent terrace touches her neck with fingers like ice.

“What they pretend to say feels truer than everything they really said. Long ago, long gone, long-faced and languishing, but it hurts less this way. In someone else’s words, your own poison becomes a balm.”

She turns around to find whatever inebriated actor is practicing their soliloquies, but all she finds is a pale and gangly boy leaning against the window, looking alarmingly straight at her, alarmingly unblinking.

“Sorry, what-“

“He liked it,” the boy says, with a gossamer-thin voice. “All who really listened liked it. You helped.”

“… Thank you?”

“You should go join them. They miss you. Sera wants to see you drink so much wine that you fall asleep so she can paint funny things on your face with the rest of her stage makeup.”

Lavellan laughs like a question mark, but the boy only nods. Another breeze passes by, and she decides to nod back and leave him be. No matter. Sera has strange friends.

She finds them all gathered in one place. Blackwall offers to drive them all in the van to an afterparty at Lavellan’s house. Cassandra’s hands are finally empty, the stagehands Cullen and Leliana leaning on each of her shoulders in exhaustion. Josephine has magicked up a tray of frilly treats from the theater’s fancy café. Dorian wants to bring his new Qunari friend, who congratulates Lavellan by patting her back so hard she almost falls over. Sera does indeed dangle her face paint tube in clear menace. Zevran counters by offering up a bottle of fine Antivan red that he has smuggled into the dressing room, where Vivienne had left an extra bouquet of roses.

More than anything, they are her triumph. When she is squeezed between them in the back seat, loudly singing along to the radio, it feels warmer than any campfire.

In her pocket, the business card burns. The night-clad road rolls on ahead of them. She thinks of the Keeper just one last time, as a goodnight, and as a precaution against whatever debauchery she may engage in tonight that she would not want any mother-figure to see.

Over the radio, an old melody rings in her ears, and it sounds more like her future than her past.

\--

_“And if you are wondering, this is the trick: fear them both for what they are, and love them both for what they are not. It is only the latter that will keep you free.”_

_Exit FEN’HAREL. LULLABY plays, and the lights dim once more, leaving only the shape of the wolf visible on stage._


End file.
